Review: Hail – Inheritance of Evilness

Post navigation

Open your eyes onto a smoky fireside invocation. A foreboding energy penetrates the air before consciousness is fully gained. Your own blood is now being spilled in an oath to summon the glory and violence of the distant past. An immense groove hastily blazes a trail away from the ritual clearing into the unknown. The earth-crushing tempo slowly simmers with a primordial rage, eventually becoming so all-consuming that the first psalm itself eventually sinks beneath the mirth. The violent outburst at the eight minute mark is the crescendo of testosterone that seemed only inevitable at the onset of this odyssey. Primordial murderous ecstasy bites down with force on the trachea. Your faded body lies among the bloated, strewn and mangled corpses as the sun casts its first rays on the now abandoned ritual site. The vicious rampage continues trudging through thorny brush and steep terrain, seeking out new sacrificial grounds and shading itself from the harsh sunlight.

Echoing voices stir your consciousness, hurriedly separating the living from the dead. The riff at the heart of “The War Must Go On” squirms violently as you try to maintain a tight grip on reality. Masterful creativity on the strings constantly layers itself for an increasingly dramatic conclusion, weaving thick vines across the forest floor to entangle the unwary survivors. The strings seem to moan at times, swaying in the funeral winds as the pulsating hypnotism spirals outward into silence and confusion. Total collapse frequently seems imminent at every turn, yet the instruments always prevail and gather up the rest of the noise into a new cohesive unit.

Upon exiting the green gate of the unforgiving forests, a catastrophic scene of total destruction dominates the landscape. We realize that we are the lucky ones as we watch the smoldering embers of early memories and behold the silence of absolute death. “Earth’s Historical Might Inheritance Prophecy” wastes no energy meandering around with past thoughts, militantly maintaining a frenzied assault as a barbaric transformation begins to emerge throughout your entire body. This movement is a sixteen minute mind-melting meditation of pure ancient bloodlust. The end feels nigh at every revolution but each cycle begins with a distinct tone as the spirit of the warrior plants and sows its seed inside you. The deceptive repetition becomes dizzying as the struggle to maintain full consciousness throughout this metamorphosis weighs heavily on the spirit.

Surviving this massive internal change appears bleak as all external sensations become morbidly psychotic. The dissipation of “Black Death Metal Warrior” into a crazed crawl causes an implosion in the brain, ripping it apart fiber by fiber. Vitals are crammed back together in a random order and everything seems to continue under its former guise, although the energy is weirder since the reconstruction. The demented speed of the battery performance exudes a murderous aura that deserts normal perceptions of time in its furrow of mad sloppiness. We emerge with a vengeance from the ruined lands, and the lone path forward is paved with the promise of future bloodshed.

A triumphant assault ends this backwoods debauchery in devastating fashion. “Barbaryan (Finland)” menacingly prods along with devious howls of primordial instinct and resounding horns of war. Enemies are stricken down first with a gaze of desolation, then lastly with the quaking strike of the battleaxe. There is no time to reflect on minor victories as we are laid bare at the altar of world domination, with unwavering commitment being the only opportunity to achieve eternal glory. An undeniable groove, careening across the sky throughout the previous movements, finally slams into the Earth’s surface in its final act, clouding destiny in a tempest of dirt, lava and deafening commotion.